


and you want to travel with her, and you want to travel blind

by pentaghastly



Category: Enola Holmes (2020), Enola Holmes Series - Nancy Springer
Genre: Alternate Universe - Bookstore, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M, edith is here too and she's a badass as always, enola sells books and tewky sells flowers and this is FLUFF BABEY, i named tewky william in tribute of mr darcy thanks, they're children don't be gross on here or u and i will fight, this is pure indulgent fluff. they are babies in love. the end.
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-05
Updated: 2020-10-05
Packaged: 2021-03-07 22:54:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,407
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26841733
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pentaghastly/pseuds/pentaghastly
Summary: And Thursday will be the end of it, Enola is sure. After all, he’s just a boy. How complicated can he be?(Mistake number four: nobody isjustanything.Enola has forgotten to expect the unexpected.)or: Enola works at a bookstore and Tekwy brings her flowers and there's no symbolism here at all, okay, the flowers don't have any hidden meanings.
Relationships: Enola Holmes/Viscount "Tewky" Tewksbury
Comments: 51
Kudos: 565





	and you want to travel with her, and you want to travel blind

**Author's Note:**

> this is short, self-indulgent, innocent, sweet fluff. pls enjoy <3 
> 
> edith owns my heart thanks

Enola is not one for exaggeration. She thinks that people who frequently resort to hyperbole are people who, generally speaking, have very little of import to say at all. She thinks that people who use the word _literally_ in every other sentence typically have _literally_ nothing else of interest going on in their lives, hence why the resort to the—admittedly understandable—embellishment of every hour of every day.

So when Enola says that relentlessly pursuing a summer time job at Baker Street Books is _literally_ the worst decision she’s ever made, one can be certain that she means it.

Most emphatically.

Edith is wonderful. Enola doesn’t have much of a benchmark for bosses, given that she’s sixteen and homeschooled and this is the first job that she’s ever had, but she thinks that if her life is going to be under the control of someone it may as well be someone strong, someone self-assured, someone powerful. She’s _funny_. She’s brilliant. She challenges Enola to be the best version of herself that she can be, and doesn’t take any excuses from anyone regardless of social status, wealth, or gender.

So it’s not Edith’s fault that she hates the job. It’s not even the _job’s_ fault that she hates it, because the job itself is brilliant. She spends every day surrounded by books, books with cracked spines and faded covers, books that are essentially begging to be read. On her breaks she delights in the trials and triumphs of Elizabeth Bennet, doing all that she could to rebel intellectually against a society that wanted her to fit into an even box. She audibly gasps towards the final pages of _Rebecca_ , delighting in every twist and turn. She lives more in the shelves of Baker Street Books than she has in sixteen years, which is exactly why she’d wanted the job in the first place—it’s hardly exciting, but it’s something she’s doing entirely on her own.

It’s not Edith’s fault.

It’s not the job’s fault.

It’s not _Enola’s_ fault. And as much as she’d love it to be Mycroft’s fault—which, to be entirely honest, most things were—he’s been out of the country for weeks so she can’t exactly blame this on him.

It’s because of the boy.

It’s always, _always_ , because of that ridiculous boy.

.

The first thing she thinks when she sees him is:

He’s pretty. 

That is not intended as a compliment.

But he is—he’s objectively pretty. Pretty in a way that Enola has never quite managed to accomplish and has never desired to. He’s pretty in the way that people only extraordinarily wealthy people are pretty, hair absurdly soft and smooth and face as kind as someone who’s never had a worry in his life, because realistically he probably hasn’t. He probably wakes up every day looking exactly like this.

Looking exactly like he does when he’s banging on the shop window as she’s trying to close, grinning enthusiastically and holding something behind his back.

She thinks: she’s alone, and she doesn’t have to open the door for him.

She doesn’t.

Under no circumstances should she feel _compelled_ to. She has things to do, and this is how young women get murdered.

(Although Enola is at least one hundred percent positive that she could fight him off. He’s taller, yes, but he’s gangly and he has the softness of some pretentious nineteenth century lord. A spar between the two of them would be almost comically uneven, but she’s only been working at the shop for three days and she doesn’t want to get fired for murder on the premises, even if it was in self-defence.

Not just yet, anyways.)

He’s not going to leave until she opens the door. Enola knows this, and she can’t default to Edith because Edith ran down the block to pick up dinner for the two of them to eat while they closed up—which had been wildly irresponsible, Enola now realizes, leaving a sixteen-year-old to fend for herself in a shop she barely knows the proper layout of—so really the only option left is to allow him inside and hope that he isn’t as insane as he looks.

Which, to be fair, isn’t _that_ crazy. If it weren’t for the frantic knocking and the remarkably well-defined cheekbones (really, she hadn’t thought such a thing was possible without photoshop) she thinks that he’d look almost entirely average.

She opens the door.

This is her first mistake.

“You need to get rid of the aconite.”

She blinks.

He stares.

“Why?”

Asking—that is her second.

“Besides the fact that aconite is poisonous—”

“This is a _book shop_. You are aware of what a book shop is, aren’t you?”

“I—of course I am.”

“Right. So, being that this is a book shop, I hardly think any of our customers are going to start nibbling on the window displays. Is that all?” 

“Aconite symbolizes death. By putting them in your window you’re basically welcoming your customers to their impending doom.”

“That’s ridiculous,” she scoffs. 

“It’s true.”

“It’s _obscenely_ niche. No one is paying that close of attention to the hidden messages of the bouquets in front of the bookstore.”

“I am.”

“You’re right. Pardon me.” Enola clears her throat, plasters on a fake smile, and begins again. “No one _normal_ is paying that close of attention. Now, I’ll ask again: is that all?” 

“And you?”

“Me?”

“Are you someone normal? You don’t look it.”

She should probably be offended. She should probably be significantly more offended by the existence of this idiotic boy than she actually is, but despite herself she’s intrigued; Enola has never been able to resist a mystery, and a very pretty boy who comes banging on her shop window to prattle on about flowers is a mystery of the highest order. 

Here lies mistake number three: allowing herself to be interested in him. Once her mind latches onto something she knows, from tedious experience, that it’ll never let go. She’ll be thinking about him forever, thinking about him until she somehow miraculously manages to figure him out, and this is entirely inconvenient as being interested in a boy, even if it’s only in a purely clinical sense, is something that Enola has sworn to herself that she would never allow to happen. 

Except is has. Has, had, _is_ happening, all in a five second flash that bursts in front of her eyes and changes the annoying flower boy into a puzzle that needs to be solved. And she will, of course, solve him. She just hopes that it happens fast. 

“What would you suggest, then?”

He grins.

“Are you here tomorrow?”

“Thursday.”

“Thursday,” he echoes, smiling as if it’s the greatest thing he’s ever heard. “I’ve got the perfect thing in mind.”

And Thursday will be the end of it, Enola is sure. After all, he’s just a boy.

How complicated can he be?

.

Mistake number four.

Nobody is _just_ anything.

Enola has forgotten to expect the unexpected.

.

Edith is awesome.

Not in the modernized sense of the word, not in the way that means _cool_ or any other variation of the phrase—she is _awe_ some as in awe-inducing, and while Enola is quite confident in her own skills she also feels frequently overwhelmed in the presence of her boss, in the realization of how little she seems to know about the world and how Edith is, down to the very root of her, essentially everything that Enola admires.

She’s brilliant. Confident. Calm under pressure with a dry wit and a sharp tongue that Enola knows has tripped Sherlock up on more than one occasion. She’s the only woman, the only _person_ that has ever successfully managed to make Enola’s older brother appear small both in intellect and, somehow, in stature as well. She’s ruthless in the best sort of way, with an uncanny ability to prod down into the very core of a person and see exactly what it is that’s rooted at their center. She’s incredible, and that’s exactly why Enola doesn’t tell her about the flower boy when she comes back with their dinner on Tuesday night.

This is mistake number five.

(Six? Honestly, she’s lost count.)

She should have told Edith. Edith could have helped her—Edith could have offered her advice on how to scare away a human whirlwind of dimpled cheeks and perfect hair. Edith could have prepared her for this, because Enola knows a lot of things (archery, calligraphy, jujitsu, how to break a grown man’s neck in three easy steps) but she doesn’t know _people_. Her mother had made certain of that, and now she herself is paying the price.

She should have told Edith. She _really_ should have gotten some guidance on how to prepare for a boy to storm into a bookshop on an otherwise quiet Thursday afternoon, slamming a bouquet of flowers on the front counter as if they’re a particularly compelling piece of evidence and not…plants.

“Azaleas!” he declares. Enola wonders if she’s supposed to be impressed. “Pink, yellow, and white. All friendly and welcoming. They’re to remind your customers of home.” 

“I don’t want to remind them of home,” she says, slowly, deliberately. Maybe if she acts disinterested it’ll prompt him to leave. “I want to remind them of books. The books that they should be buying. Because this is a _store_ , not a flower garden.” 

He frowns. It’s cute, and she hates it. “Huh. I don’t think there are any flowers that symbolize books.”

“A pity.” 

The bouquet is nice, she thinks. Soft. Gentle. 

_Like him_ , a traitorous part of her mind hisses, but that is a ridiculous thought because Enola doesn’t know him and she certainly doesn’t want to, even if he does know a remarkable amount about plants and their various meanings—which is, admittedly interesting. And curious. And odd. And something that probably has a deeper purpose that she’d really like to discover.

“Why are you here?”

“I told you I had the perfect thing in mind. I wanted to help.”

“Yes, but…” It’s infuriating, the casual nonchalance with which he declares all of his intentions. Normal people don’t just _show up_ places, particularly not with flowers that have deeper symbolism. She silently wills Edith to come out of the stock room and free her from this misery; if anyone knows how to be rid of useless boys it’s her. “ _Why_?”

“It seemed like the neighbourly thing to do,” he says, and he pulls out his phone (which gives Enola the horrifying idea that he might actually ask for her number, and she is entirely not emotionally prepared for that kind of rage right now) before showing her a Google Maps location less than three blocks away.

To where things suddenly start to make sense.

_Tewksbury and Sons Flower Co._

“You’re Tewksbury, then?”

“ _Sons,_ actually. Grandson, if you really want to be specific.”

“I don’t, thank you.”

They stand in silence for a moment, Holmes and Tewksbury, distinctly separate entities with utterly nothing in common. There’s no reason for her to like him, after all. He’s done nothing that’s made himself _deserving_ of like—he’s been annoying, obnoxious, unnecessarily energetic and overly-friendly considering that they’ve only met a grand total of two times—but she feels an odd sort of kinship with this very strange boy, and she knows that this likely means it’s the beginning of something horrible.

“Your hair is ridiculous,” Enola says, because she’s run out of clever things and this seems like the next safest option. She doesn’t typically resort immediately to insults but it seems like the only thing that she has left. “Your entire _being_ is ridiculous. I refuse to believe that this is actually the sort of person that you are.”

He doesn’t waver. He doesn’t back down. He just looks at her, smiling as brilliantly as if she’s just bestowed upon him the kindest of compliments, and Enola has to wonder if she’s accidentally entered some sort of backwards universe where nothing is as it seems and stupid, pretty boys who like flowers seem to believe that being called a ridiculous person is code for wanting to be friends. Friends or…something. She can’t quite figure out what it is that Tewksbury wants from her, and that’s more terrifying than anything else.

Well, than _almost_ anything else. Because Enola doesn’t know what she wants from him either, and that is an entirely new and foreign feeling that she’s really not keen to confront. Not now, not ever.

“And the azaleas,” he says after a moment, rocking back, forth on his toes like an anxious child. “Are they ridiculous too?”

“Yes.”

Everything feels heavy. The music, the air, the _clomp_ of Edith’s footsteps on the stairs above them as she shuffles boxes around the attic. Enola has never known what it feels like to drown and she’s never know what it feels like to be helpless, but she thinks that she must be feeling it now—for once in her life she has no idea what to say.

And that doesn’t scare her, which in turn scares the living hell out of her. For the first time she’s not scared of not knowing, and she thinks that she must have been wrong: if Tewksbury, Little Lord of Flowers can make her unafraid of the unknown, then he must be very complicated indeed.

Enola knows that in situations like this, situations where the obvious answer isn’t always…well, _obvious_ , there are really only two paths that a person can walk down: you can think, or you can do. She could stand here staring at Tewksbury, brow furrowed, trying to figure him out in thirty seconds or less (and no doubt failing), or she could walk over to the window display, throw the aconite in the bin, and replace it with his azalea offering. Sure, it would be a concession of temporary defeat, but sometimes one must lose a battle to win the war.

And so she does.

“How much do I owe you?”

“What? Nothing. No, it was—” he laughs, just a little. It’s a nice sound, Enola thinks. A bit startled, but nice. “It wasn’t anything special at all. It was a gift.” 

“So this is something you do often, then? Giving bouquets to girls you don’t know?” 

“Only when I’m trying to prevent them from wishing death upon unsuspecting customers.”

“What kind of books do you like?”

“I…what?”

“ _Books_ ,” she says, and then frowns. “You do know how to read, don’t you?” 

“Of course I know how to read. I’m not entirely an idiot, you know.” Enola does know this. No one who knows as much about flowers and their symbolism as he does can be an idiot, and even beyond that he doesn’t exactly seem like one—a touch excitable, yes, and maybe a little bit odd, but certainly not stupid. Not at all. “Give me a moment to think.” 

“Don’t hurt yourself,” she says, poking the furrow that forms between his brow. “I’m not asking you for the meaning of life. This isn’t a trick question.” 

Well, it is. Kind of. It is in that it’ll tell her a million and one things that Enola wants to know about him, because you can learn a lot about someone from the kind of books that they enjoy and right now learning about Tewksbury is on the top of her list. The sooner she solves the mystery, the sooner she can be rid of him for good.

“You can’t laugh.”

“At you? _Never_.”

“I mean it.” 

Enola places a hand over her heart in mock solemnity. “I swear it.” 

“I suppose,” he begins, then stops for a moment as if to gather his thoughts, “Well, I’m quite keen on romances.”

 _Ah._ Now that, she thinks, fits very neatly into the picture that she’s trying to paint. And why he thinks she would laugh is beyond her; there’s nothing wrong, she thinks, with desiring something more. Whether that something more is a person or an object or a career is irrelevant. It simply happens to be human instinct to yearn. 

“Come back tomorrow,” she says. “Around this time. I think we can work something out.” 

He swallows.

She grins.

.

With a promise to Edith that the books will return unharmed and a stony-faced exterior to protect her from her boss’s questioning looks, Enola Holmes and William Tewksbury begin their exchange. 

_Twelfth Night_ for azaleas. 

(“I quite liked it,” he tells her a few days later, pressing the book gently back into her outstretched palms. “Only how no one figured out that Viola was Cesario all along seems a bit unrealistic, don’t you think?”

“It’s a romantic comedy. It’s not meant to be realistic.” 

“But still,” he says. “I don’t know. It felt like something was missing.”)

 _Anna Karenina_ for carnations.

(“For the love of—this wasn’t romantic, it was _miserable_.”

“The two don’t have to be mutually exclusive, you know.”

“Enola Holmes. Have I told you that you absolutely terrify me? Because—and I mean this from the bottom of my heart—sometimes you _absolutely_ terrify me.”)

 _Tin Man_ for lilac. 

(“Okay. Okay, now I know that you’re just trying to mess with me.”

She doesn’t disagree.)

Gloxinia. Primrose. Violet zinnia. _Emma, Eleanor & Park, Me Before You_. The flowers will make the guests feel welcome, he says, and even though Enola doesn’t quite believe him at first he seems to be right; the shop is busier, the window displays feel inexplicably warmer, and somehow it’s all because of him.

It becomes the highlight of her week, shamefully enough. His reaction to each novel that she hands him helps piece together the mystery of Tewksbury a little bit more. She observes the soft reverence he holds for every book that she lends to him; he looks awed, as if he cannot believe she’s trusting him with something so precious, and Enola thinks that she’s slowly beginning to realize just what sort of person the young Lordling of Flowers really is:

He’s _good_.

Fundamentally good. Good to his core. She’s a very intelligent girl, remarkably so, and she knows without question that no one is purely good because no one is _purely_ anything. It’s simply isn’t a possibility. Each and every human being is a sum of millions of different things, atoms and particles and emotions, and it would be statistically impossible for each one of those things to be something good. What matters is the sum, and the sum of Tewksbury’s parts seems to be something wonderful.

Something kind. Something clever. Something that notices flowers with a vaguely ominous meaning in the shop window of a store he has no personal connection to, and someone who won’t rest until said meaning is replaced with one that’s pure.

And that’s very much the trouble of it: the more Enola gets to know Tewksbury, the more she _wants_ to know him. That’s never happened before; what happens is that she figures someone out, pieces them together, and then she grows bored and moves on to a new investigation with a spring in her step. Perhaps that sounds callous but she doesn’t intend it to be so. It’s simply that once the puzzle is solved there typically isn’t anything that might persuade her to give it another glance.

“You like him,” Edith says one afternoon, coming to stand beside Enola as they watch him walk away with an armful of books—she’s given him _The Goldfinch_ and _Perks of Being a Wallflower_ this week, just to see how he copes with two novels on such opposite ends of the spectrum. “Don’t you?”

Does she?

Edith levels her with a look, and Enola realizes that—no, lying is not an option.

“I might.” 

The admission comes as a shock, even to herself. She _does_ like Tewksbury. They hardly know each other, but she likes his stupid flowers and his stupid smile and the idiotic flop of his hair; Enola isn’t sure when it happened, but it did. It did, and she doesn’t know when, and she doesn’t know why, and honestly she doubts she ever will.

“Good,” Edith says, sounding far too smug for Enola’s liking. “I like him too.”

.

And that’s how it happens, really.

He becomes her friend.

Her best friend. Her _only_ friend, if she’s being honest, because he’s the first person who’s stuck around and he’s the first person whom Enola has wanted to do so. 

They text each other stupid messages in the middle of the night and he brings her chocolates on his breaks, tucking himself comfortably into the reading nook in the corner of the shop with whatever novel Enola has lent him that week. And he’s brilliant, she thinks, this strange little rich boy with his love of flowers and his crooked smile and the dimple in his chin. He’s absolutely lovely.

And a few weeks into their friendship he brushes his hand against her arm and her stomach—it _swoops_ , like something from one of his romantic novels, like something that she’s pretty sure she’s only ever heard described in fiction, and the entire occurrence is so bizarre that it forces Enola to confront one simple truth:

She has absolutely no idea what to make of William Tewksbury.

And she’s remarkably okay with that.

.

“I’m only saying—”

“Well, you _shouldn’t_. You shouldn’t say anything at all.”

“I’m only saying that I feel as though it’s a little bit overrated. That doesn’t mean that it’s bad,” he says, sounding terrified for his life (and rightfully so, Enola thinks), “because it’s not. I really enjoyed it. I just mean that I don’t think that initially hating each other should be the benchmark for romance.” 

“They didn’t _hate_ each other, they misunderstood each other and were too proud to admit their faults. And their intellectual chemistry—that’s the true romantic benchmark. Not the squabbling.”

“You know I’m right.”

“I know you’re an idiot. _Pride and Prejudice_ , overrated? Sometimes I think you’re just trying to infuriate me on purpose.” 

“Careful, Enola Holmes, or I might think that you’re a secret romantic.”

She busies herself with rearranging the flowers—red camellias today, flowers with a meaning that he hadn’t offered up and Enola couldn’t possibly attempt to guess at—and studiously avoids eye contact. Any time she locks eyes with Tewksbury she ends up saying far more than she should. It’s been that way since the first time they met, when all that she’d wanted to do was say absolutely nothing at all.

(So maybe she is a romantic, or maybe he’s made her want to be one. There’s nothing wrong with that, is there? A woman can be intelligent and capable and individualistic and loving all at once. A woman can be whatever the hell she wants to be, even if that happens to be head-over-heels for a boy with a passion for flora and fauna that’s almost intimidating in its intensity.)

“If not being disgusted at the concept of finding an intellectual equal who challenges me to become the best version of myself makes me a closet romantic, then fine.” He looks far too pleased with himself. She hates it. “I suppose I am one.” 

“And what if you’ve already met your intellectual equal?” 

She scoffs. “Believe me, I think I’d know.”

“Or perhaps you’re just so wrapped up in your own head that you wouldn’t even notice if you had.” 

“Are you implying that I’m obtuse, Tewky?” 

“No, I’m _saying_ that you are.” 

“Then tell me,” she snaps, sounding almost as flustered as she feels, “what I should be looking for that I’m apparently missing.” 

He approaches slowly, as if offering her time to run away. And Enola would be lying if she says that she isn’t considering it; running, she thinks, while cowardly and hardly her go-to move, currently seems like an entirely more appealing option than this. She feels cornered. He’s smiling at her, and he has the upper hand, and she knows that she’s trapped. 

She takes a step back.

He plucks one of the camellias out of the vase.

“Camellias,” he begins, “for admiration. Yearning. Adoration. People always think roses are the flowers of romance, but I tend to disagree. There are so many other options with deeper meanings. Lilacs, for example—did you know that lilacs can be representative of first love, Enola?”

She shakes her head.

He takes another step forward.

And—oh. _Oh_. Everything begins to click. Everything begins to make sense, and…well, perhaps Tewksbury hadn’t been so complicated a puzzle after all.

“And carnations?” she asks.

“Affection.”

“Purple zinnia?” 

“ _Lasting_ affection. It’s different, you see.”

“Naturally. Gloxinia?” 

“Love at first sight. You were in front of the window rearranging the books, and you kept getting distracted. You kept picking them up and flipping through the first pages, this little crease forming on your brow, and all I could think was that I—” 

“And were you going to tell me any of this?” 

He blushes, cheeks turning nearly the same colour as the flowers in the vase, and Enola can’t help but pity him only a little. He’s not certain how she feels, she thinks. He hasn’t got the slightest idea, which is both upsetting and somewhat reassuring; at least she knows that she hasn’t lost her touch when it comes to keeping her cards close to her chest.

“I was telling you,” he says, motioning to window and the flowers on its sill. “I’ve been telling you all along. You just weren’t listening.” 

“I’m listening now.” 

He blinks. “Are you?” 

“Quite intently. Although you might need to take a step closer, just to make things a little more clear.” 

He does.

“I’m sorry it took me so long. I’ve never been very good with words, Enola Holmes.” 

“Lucky for you,” she says, “I’m more than clever enough for the both of us.” 

And kissing Tewksbury—

Well, he might be right. Because, she thinks, as she kisses and kisses and _kisses_ him, innocent and sweet, trying her hardest not to laugh at the anxious squeak that arises from the back of his throat at the first insistent press of her lips—

Their squabbling, as delightful as it is, should hardly be the benchmark for romance. 

(He’s hardly her intellectual equal.

But, well, he might be something close.)

.

**Author's Note:**

> comments & kudos mean the world


End file.
